We’re about to start a crowdfunding campaign to raise enough money to get the site started. We’re looking for supporters and cheerleaders as well as readers! Please read about our website and goals below. If you’re interested in backing us, subscribe to our mailing list, Twitter, Google+ or Facebook Page to get a notification when the campaign begins.
What is CBS?
The Corner Beauty Shop is a place for women of color to talk about beauty and fashion and the personal and political choices and issues around beauty and fashion. The website will be part product talk — skin & hair, clothes, accessories — and part blog posts discussing how our fashion choices affect our lives, career, and communities. These posts might be about the difficulty in finding makeup for our skin tone, or the trauma of transitioning from processed hair to natural, or not being able to find clothes that fit because designers only have one “typical” body shape in mind and more.
We intend to cover beauty, fashion and health for women of color of all sizes, ages, and physical abilities. (Yes, that does mean we intend for the site to be kid and teen friendly.) We hope to focus our product coverage on companies either helmed/owned by people of color or companies that market responsibly to our demographic.
All discussions and comments on the site will be monitored and moderated to create as safe a space as possible so that women will feel comfortable asking questions and talking about their experiences.
Our Fundraising Goals
This website has been in the works for a long time, but the problem we kept running into was having the money to pay the managing editor and all contributors. Now that crowdfunding is commonplace, it seemed like a good time to refresh the idea and ask the community for help.
Our primary goal is to raise enough money to run the site for 6 months. This is enough time to establish ourselves in the community and get enough traffic to attract advertisers. This is also the minimum amount of time a blog needs to be active before we can apply to affiliate sites, which will be a major source of money going forward.
Here’s the budget breakdown:
- Posts: $310 per month ($10 per post, one post per day for the first six months)
- Managing Editor: $800 per month (part time)
- Assistant Editor (intern): $200 per month
- Logo Design: $300
Total: $8,160
Since most crowdfunding platforms a percentage of what we raise, we’re aiming for a $10,000 goal.
The secondary goal is to raise enough money to operate for one year. That would be $20,000. Even if we don’t reach this, any extra money we raise will go toward paying the editors and contributors in additional months and adding more to the logo creation budget.
When Will The Fundraising Campaign Begin?
We’re aiming for mid-to-late August. We’re still investigating the best crowdfunding platform. If you’d like to know when the campaign begins, you can join our (announcement-only) mailing list, follow us on Twitter or Google+ or Like our page on Facebook.